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What Drives a False Allegator?

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by Anna Raccoon on October 13, 2014

I had expected that I should have been writing a ‘Court of Protection’ story this morning, I spent the week-end bashing my head against possibly the most complex decision to ever emanate from the Court; however, the more I read, the more it turned into a learned and devastating deconstruction of a False Allegation.

For those of you who want to understand how the court deals with welfare matters concerning a diagnosis of Autism, or the continuing conflict between mainstream medicine and what might be termed ‘fringe medicine’ – then I heartily commend you to the actual case file. Even conspiracy theorists will find something to interest them in there. It is the Judgment that will carry on ‘giving’. The court papers filled some 35 lever arch files.

I became fascinated by the damning deconstruction of a false allegation – and since that is my interest, other aspects of the case will be truncated. Another time.

I shall call her Edith, Mrs ‘E’ in the case – and I loathe alphabet soup. Edith appeared as litigant in person – and gave evidence for 20 days…she proposed to call 139 witnesses, including a High Court Judge and an MP.

Edith had a baby girl in 1987. Two years later, she gave birth to a son. I shall call him Matt. Normal pregnancies, nothing untoward to report. Perfectly normal childhood ailments, a chest infection, inoculations, were all recorded in his medical notes.

When Matt was two and a half, Edith took him to Guy’s hospital, telling the paediatrician that Matt had difficulty breathing, and ‘lacked control over his mouth’. The paediatrician noted that Matt possibly had ‘autistic learning difficulties’ that might require further investigation. In that year there were eight further visits to the GP noted in M’s medical records in which he was reported as suffering from a variety of infections. There is no record of any developmental delay in these notes.

Edith and her husband were, by all accounts, devoted parents; they had no need – or wish – for Local Authority involvement in the care of their children. However, another 16 years passed, and Edith contacted the Local Authority looking for assistance in finding a residential placement for Matt, now 18. From this point on – two worlds violently collided.

Edith had great faith in what is termed ‘complimentary medicine’ – homeopathy, cranial osteopathy, reflexology, naturopathy and light and sound therapy. Matt had regular treatment for a variety of ‘self-reported’ (by Edith) ailments. By the time the Local Authority became aware of Matt, he was taking a daily dose of a probiotic, six vitamin supplements, four mineral supplements, five trace elements, fatty acids, amino acids, enzymes and a range of homeopathic remedies and Edith believed that M was suffering from an adverse effect to electromagnetic energies and was wrapping electronic items in his bedroom in tin foil to protect him.

Something else that the Local Authority was unaware of; when Matt was 9, Dr Andrew Wakefield published his paper in the Lancet claiming that there was a link between Autism and the type of MMR vaccine that Matt had been given at nine months old. A paper that has since been discredited, and Dr Wakefield struck off the medical register. The argument over that link still rages, and I do not propose to get into it here – Please! – what matters for the purpose of this post is that Edith, a devoted Mother with a severely disabled son, believed it absolutely.

No longer did she torture herself wondering ‘why’ her son had developed in the way that he had – she now knew, not only was it not her fault, but there was a named body whose fault it was. GlaxoSmithKline Inc. There was a community of parents who equally believed the same thesis – and a Guru who offered them help – not to mention several high flying lawyers promising compensation. In a sense, these Mothers are the forgotten victims of the MMR scare – theirs to daily care for severely disabled children, offered a solution – is it any wonder that they cling to that solution with tenacity?

Edith became a devoted follower of Dr Wakefield; she campaigned, vociferously. She wrote to the Lord Chancellor, and the Home Secretary; when legal aid was refused for the parents to sue she became convinced that the Judge involved was possibly corrupt. She was involved in protracted arguments with the Local Authority over Matt’s care.

At the same time, Edith was lovingly supported by other parents of children with autism. She wrote of how Matt’s development had been ‘normal until he received MMR. Then he lost speech, eye contact and play. He became quite distressed, with fever, his eyes were fixed and his pupils dilated and was not well for days’. The other Mothers cheered her on – for had not that been precisely the response they had reported to Dr Wakefield?

Amongst the conspiracies that Edith claimed to have met along her path to justice for her son, was the case of the ‘missing medical notes’. She would brandish her son’s medical notes and – There! See for yourself! – were not the notes of the nine year period following his vaccination missing? Indeed they were. Other concerned parents could but agree that this was indeed prima facie evidence that the authorities were determined to conceal the truth about the vaccine.

Edith was becoming a star amongst other concerned parents. She was no longer alone at home caring for a disabled son – she was consulted, deferred to, sympathised with, respected – MPs and famous journalists sought audience with her. She was someone who had been dealt a mighty blow by a powerful body, and the damage was plain to see.

By the time she came in front of The Honourable Mr Justice Baker, she was a seasoned campaigner. She had fought court battles all across the country.

She gave Mr Justice Baker many thousands of pages to read, detailing the injustices she had faced. He read them.

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t get to be a senior High Court Judge merely because you shoot Grouse in the right company – attention to detail, an inquiring mind, and legal precision help too.

He requested a few more pages for good measure. From the NHS. Her son’s medical notes. Surprisingly, they turned up intact. No missing pages.

There he read that the account of Matt’s breathing difficulties when he had three times ‘nearly stopped breathing, turned blue, and from then had difficulties swallowing’ – had actually occurred eight months before he had the vaccine! Further, for the next nine years there had been no mention of the vaccine in connection with his developmental difficulties – which only appeared as an issue in records from as late as September 2000.

Around the time that Edith read Dr Wakefield’s account of how his ‘sample’ of autistic children had reacted to the MMR vaccine and when Edith filed for compensation in the ‘class action’ against GlaxoSmithKline.

From 2000 onwards M’s parents, and in particular his mother, have given increasingly vivid accounts of an extreme reaction to the injection experienced by M. There are descriptions of M screaming after having the injection, followed by six hours of convulsions, screaming and projectile vomiting.” In one note, recorded in an “auditory processing assessment report” dated 31st October 2002, E alleged that, following MMR, M had remained in “a persistent vegetative state for six months.”

Along the road that led to this court case, those who disbelieved Wakefield’s thesis were described as ‘Pharma trolls’, supporters of government brutality towards children; £26 million of taxpayers money was spent on opposing armies of lawyers before the legal aid commission pulled the plug; and mother’s such as Edith were encouraged to believe that ‘they would be believed’.

Any action or statement which did not further their cause was further evidence of a vast conspiracy of those in the higher echelons of the political, legal and local authority world. In the eyes of the devoted Wakefield supporters, there was an MMR conspiracy, through which thousands of doctors and scientists and the media concealed horrific alleged injuries to children. There was a legal conspiracy, through which judges denied fairness. And there was a local government conspiracy, by which hard-pressed social workers wanted to remove autistic children from their parents. So many vested interests had a dog in this fight.

Mr Justice Baker disagreed:

His parents’ account of an adverse reaction to that vaccination is fabricated. The mother has also given many other false accounts about M’s health. He has never had meningitis, autistic enterocolitis, leaky gut syndrome, sensitivity to gluten or casein, disorder of the blood brain barrier, heavy metal poisoning, autonomic dysautonomia (which, in any event, is not recognised in any classification of medical conditions), rheumatoid arthritis or Lyme disease. As a result of E maintaining that he had these and other conditions, she has subjected M to numerous unnecessary tests and interventions. He did have a dental abscess for which E failed to obtain proper treatment and caused him 14 months of unnecessary pain and suffering. E has also insisted that M be subjected to a wholly unnecessary diet and regime of supplements. Through her abuse of her responsibility entrusted to her as M’s deputy, she has controlled all aspects of his life, restricted access to him by a number of professionals and proved herself incapable of working with the local authority social workers and many members of the care staff at the various residential homes where M has lived.

This behaviour amounts to factitious disorder imposed on another. In addition, E has a combination of personality disorders – a narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder and elements of an emotional unstable personality disorder.

‘Factitious disorder’ is what we now call Münchausen syndrome. I wasn’t aware until I started reading for this post that it includes the belief that one is suffering from ‘psychological trauma’. As are so many of those who have come forth to make claims regarding historic sex abuse.

It is a damning assessment of Edith and her false allegations – but is it an assessment of a ‘liar’?

Or is the case a detailed deconstruction of how a genuine ‘wrong’, in this case her son’s autism, can be manipulated by lawyers, medics, the media, well meaning campaigners – and the hysterics – until a vulnerable and emotionally unstable woman, barely coping with the trials life has strewn in her path, begins to believe the tales she has ‘adjusted’ to fit the dominant narrative in order to belong to, and receive the approval of, what seems to be a supportive community?

wiki says, “Münchausen syndrome is more common in men”. I would have instinctively thought the opposite in gender terms, if I’d ever stopped to think of it in those terms at all. Perhaps that is because of the movie, The Sixth Sense, when the ghostly girl has been poisoned by her mother.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEug8JqvXFU

To answer your closing question, I’m inclined to see this extremely unfortunate case as an example of something which probably began as a lie but which developed over a period of years through a long process of confabulation and self-delusion to the point where, in the mind of “Edith”, the truth has become ephemeral.

I’m not inclined to view her son’s autism as being in any sense a “wrong” – the best evidence we have points to a genetic/epigenetic cause over which no parent has any measure of control or responsibility – but if you’re suggesting that she may herself have been “wronged” by the various parties that have acted over the years to fuel and reinforce her increasingly aberrant beliefs about her son’s condition and its cause then, yes, I would agree with that.

From reading Brian Deer’s commentaries and the CoP judgment, “Edith” comes across as someone with overriding need to feel that she in control of her situation – this seems to be a very feature of other aspects of her life – but who, sadly, in the matter of her son’s neurocognitive condition, has been confronted with a situation which she ultimately cannot control. That’s a heavy psychological burden for anyone to cope with so it’s entirely unsurprising that she has chosen to believe those who appear to offer her the prospect of control even if that it ultimately a false hope.

And, yes, there are almost certainly strong parallels here with issues such as False Memory Syndrome, etc.

I didn’t mean a ‘wrong’ in the sense of ‘someone’ being responsible, but rather a ‘wrong’ that life had delivered. I know I’ve lain awake at night wondering if I brought on the return of my cancer by having involved myself in all the stress of the Savile fiasco – I can’t begin to imagine how you must torment yourself wondering if you are to blame in some way for the suffering of the child you gave birth to, nor how reassuring it must be to feel able to point the finger squarely outwards at ‘another’ with an appreciative audience egging you on. Edith actually has my every sympathy – I have seen first hand how difficult life is for those who care for a child such as Matt. My derision is reserved for those who seek to manipulate the Edith’s.

“She would brandish her son’s medical notes and – There! See for yourself! – were not the notes of the nine year period following his vaccination missing? Indeed they were.”

“[the judge] requested a few more pages for good measure. From the NHS. Her son’s medical notes. Surprisingly, they turned up intact. No missing pages.”

Sounds as if somewhere in the process of the law on the way to this (presumably) hugely expensive tax-payer funded farce in the High Court, anyone had been doing “Fact Checking” they could all have been spared a lot of trouble. Less fees of course too…..

Buggeration! I can actually see both sides in this! While Mum is in many respects the actual poster girl for ‘tin-foil-hatters-R-us’, it cannot be suggested that she has not made great efforts for her disabled son; it is not her fault he is in such straits. on t’other hand, the Judge does indeed seem a fair and learned man who must do what he does within the strictures of the law. If he has perhaps been a tad unfair to Edith, he can only go on what factual information he has; it is not his fault that some of what she has done screams ‘nutter’ is it. I cannot help but feel that some at least is because Edith has been badly advised/mentored/ shouted ‘OI’ at whatever…. Here would be/have been my advice: Don’t wrap stuff in tin foil for God’s sake woman! You build a Faraday Cage out of copper mesh, does the same thing but doesn’t scream ‘nutter’ at anyone who sees it. You can have background radiation tested quite cheaply, and there you are backed up ‘cos it’s science innit. Don’t pour supplements into the poor little sod without asking the quack – get it on the medical notes that a professional said yea or nay. Don’t go tooled up and mob handed against a big company unless you have all your ducks in a row, especially don’t do so on the unsupported word of a doctor who was so sloppy and batshit crazy that he got himself struck off! Don’t, really don’t go for confrontation as your first and seemingly only option, it makes people want to discredit you rather than assist in any way; if you can later show that they were stonewalling, well, judges don’t like that kind of thing. Just my views.

In a country where smoking infront of a CHILD is almost classed as CHILD ABUSE (and there can be no doubt that the fASHites are working towards that goal) a mother can still deny her child the medical/pharmaceutical treatment he needs and instead ‘treat’ him with magic water ? How is that not ‘neglect’ at best and ABUSE at worst? I don’t care if she loved her son over everything in the world, it doesn’t give her the right to torture him (and letting a dental abscess go untreated is unimaginable pain).

And before anyone accuses me of the terrible neo-sin of VICTIM BLAMING, I should point out I raised a severely disabled child whilst caring for his disabled mother and his 2 brothers. I know exactly what E went through.

I think part of the problem is that perpetual motion can be shown to be contrary to the laws of Physics and Thermodynamics, hence unless and until you build one which passes the ‘smell’ test you are out to con people. Homeopathy, whilst complete bollocks on any common sense scale (Oh, water ‘remembers’ stuff) cannot so easily be demonstrated to be false, you only need one disease to go into remission after homeopathic treatment and there is your ‘proof’.

Pointing out to homeopathers that every single drop of water on the planet has undoubtably been through many millions of digestive systems in its time on the planet always seemed to me to be a good place to start. AFAIK they havent yet “discovered” the method by which water “forgets” all the nasty stuff it’s come into contact with!!

” nonsense like homeopathy seems to be no problem.”……….Let us remember that these beliefs are widely held, not least by the late St Diana of dimwits, Prince Chuckles the clown and most of the luvvies. People who can afford the very best of conventional medical care.

It is highly fashionable to adopt such “cures” and when “Edith” received a degree of celebrity by doing so I would hazard to guess that her son’s needs became secondary to the celebrity. I have no doubt she started with the very best of intentions but got side-tracked.

I was the only father who would turn up at the local ‘support group’ meetings for the national charity that dealt with the type of problem our child had. The obsessive nature of most of the mums present, as to how they perceived and consequently dealt with the issues that their child(ren) and families faced, was an eye opener, and could even be said to have been almost frightening in some instances.

Excellent point, well made. It seems to me the ‘litigators’ have a lot to answer for, but also that the culture has spread by being tailored to such ‘personalities’ being so malleable and, thus, convincing. Though I’m suspicious of the need for labels – what is a personality disorder; entrenched bad behaviour or actual mental illness? – it is undeniable that there are varying degrees and manifestations of disorders/illness.

When people genuinely BELIEVE their own truth they can be very convincing. My own father is clearly ‘on the spectrum’ somewhere and is utterly convinced he’s a thoroughly altruistic person who has been dealt a rough hand by ‘everyone else’ – but he is ‘locked in’ to his own world, his own vision and what manifests itself as regular eruptions of impotent rage (becoming more impotent as he has got older and less of a threat), or spending excessive amounts on his various obsessions as a reward to himself for ‘working hard’ without ever consulting my long-suffering mother (which have gone from an aviary full of bird when I was a baby, to model trains 10 years later (all of which are in a cupboard now, untouched for years) to buying brand new cars (plural) for thousands on equity release). We spent years trying to understand why he like this – but his selfishness and insularity is not conscious and he could never see it in a month of sundays. Every conversation on every every subject always gets twisted around to him and what he thinks, feels – he has no real perception of other peoples feelings. He genuinely believes he is a pariah.

As you say, “absolutely stunning”, as are most posts on Anna Racoon’s blog. I follow such blogs using an RSS reader and I can honestly say that out of the fifty or so I subscribe to, *ONLY* Anna Racoon’s feed is never passed by with a simple “Mark all as read” click. Some of the other feeds I subscribe to are alleged to be “worthy thinkers”; “challenge The Man”; “the facts are thus”; (‘thus’ being a favourite word of a blog author I once greatly admired and even sent pittances from my winter fuel payment to – *never again*!) and so forth and so on. I still follow them though frequently I do find myself clicking the “Mark all as read” button on some of their more pathetic and biased ramblings. I have never, ever felt such a course of action to be necessary on Ms. Racoon’s posts. I thank you for often providing the only thought for the day to an old (and now sometimes rambling) mind.

OK, first off, I’ve read extensively Dr Wakefields work, and to my mind, it has merit. I would also say that there’s shall we say anecdotal evidence that something isn’t right here, as you only have to sit down in any town centre and just look at kids today. There’s unequivical evidence out there that something is wrong here, as the majority of kids are window lickers, with at least one allergy or syndrome. Yes there’s always been the kids who were a bit thick, but now, we have kids who wear nappies because they still shit themselves at 7 and older, and it isn’t just one or two. I don’t ever remember this being the case when I was at school in the 60s and 70s, anyone else? As for your assertion that Dr Wakefield has been proven wrong, I beg to differ. Call me a “Conspiracy loon” all you wish, but it doesn’t take a great leap of faith he was got at, and what if he is right, and the medical profession knew about it, this isn’t a thalidomide thing given to a select few, but wide spread. The fabric of society would come crashing down around our ears. Another thing I’ve noticed, is the east european kids don’t tend to suffer with any of this shit, as they weren’t injected with all this crap as babies, and now other kids born of the same parents are being born over here, it would be interesting to see if they also begin to suffer the same malardies.

And all ‘this crap injected into East European kids’ is the only difference between them and us, is it? I would also point out that Dr Wakefield wasn’t suggesting that this ‘crap’ wasn’t injected into babies, merely not all at the same time – I think you will find that he himself held a patent or at least the rights to an alternative method of putting the same crap into the same babies… I said I would’t get into this argument, I’ve been here before, many times over. Similar effects don’t prove similar causes. And unless you have travelled into Eastern Europe, the Eastern European kids you will have met, are those of parents who are young fit and motivated without excessive baggage who have been able to travel to the UK for work, whatever. They are not representative of the population as a whole. I could introduce you to a large population of English men who are fit, active, intelligent, highly motivated, disciplined – and mostly pretty good looking. You would have to travel to Afghanistan to meet them en masse, and dodge the roadside bombs – and I wouldn’t say they were representative of the English male…..

Andrew Wakefield, from the hearing at the GMC “Was being paid to conduct the study by solicitors representing parents who believed their children had been harmed by MMR”. Ordered investigations “without the requisite paediatric qualifications” including colonoscopies, colon biopsies and lumbar punctures (“spinal taps”) on his research subjects without the approval of his department’s ethics board and contrary to the children’s clinical interests, when these diagnostic tests were not indicated by the children’s symptoms or medical history. “Act[ed] ‘dishonestly and irresponsibly’ in failing to disclose … how patients were recruited for the study”. “Conduct[ed] the study on a basis which was not approved by the hospital’s ethics committee.” Purchased blood samples—for £5 each—from children present at his son’s birthday party, which Wakefield joked about in a later presentation.

While I am forced to agree that we seem to have a higher percentage of mongs about than previous, I do wonder if this is not just the infantilising of the people generally, the lack of anyone to aspire to (leaving aside the landladies excellent example) and the replacement of discipline at school and a work ethic with ‘feelings’. Since most of these mutts appear male, I also wonder about an undue feminising influence; you cannot treat little boys like little girls! As regards them from the east, consider that we only get the ones who have enough drive to come here and do something, the landladies excellent example resonates again!

Right symptoms. Right diagnosis. WRONG cause. It is neither MMR nor fluoride eating our kids brains, bodies and souls. It is diesel fumes and parents who drank artificial sweeteners. Eastern european parents probably smoked more infront of their kids thus protecting them from the diesel fumes and they didn’t poison themselves with aspartame .

There is a conspiracy alright , a PETRO-pharmaceutical one. Just listen to any news report about any bad smog…you can almost smell the petroleum laden hand of censorship…’can cause respiratory illness’ (oh you mean like lung cancer? Asthma? ).

Both petrol and diesel are far more highly refined now than they were even in the seventies, we have summer and winter grades and the high performance versions of both that used (in petrol) to be 5 star. Exhaust emissions are cleaner now because of those turrble turrble car companies and oil magnates, not in spite of them! As regards lead in petrol, that was the biggest load of bollocks ever! Tetra-Ethyl Lead was added in small quantities both to improve the anti-knock properties (Octane level) of petrol and to stop burning of the valve seats which used to mean a top end overhaul every twenty thousand miles; remember decoke gasket kits? When did you last pull the head off a motor? The lead, such as it was, came out ofthe ethyl molecule under burning and instantly plated itself on the nearest hot surface, usually the exhaust valve seats. Lead in petrol was removed when it was decided to mandate catalytic converters to remove nitrous oxides (increased CO2 output, but that wasn’t a pollutant then!) at the cost of decreased fuel economy. Lead is poisonous to cats so had to go; plating to hot surfaces again see? All the wonderful unleaded is made with Benzine, a known carcinogen. The engine manufacturers have given us more efficient engines at the cost of serious complexity, not sure if the game was entirely worth the candle.

The media story from the time was that schools lay beneath the elevated Highways and the lead was accumulating in the children’s lungs. The same story then developed in the UK, especially around Birmingham I think, where a similar environment of cars in the sky existed.

I was living in Germany when they brought in the compulsory Catholic converters . I clearly remember a couple of scientist-talking heads appearing on the MSM explaining that -whilst Cats would mean an end to Acid Rain, clear blue skies and the little birds would once again sing their sweet songs-they would increase the cases of all cancers in Humans.

Funnily enough those talking heads didn’t seem to get any more invites to appear on an MSM that was greener than a polizei uniform.

Ah, catalytic converters – more moonshine. Just like the diesel particulate filter – merely there to ensure that, when static for an MOT, measured emissions will be hidden in storage – then fired up and all pumped out when the car’s back on the road.

My late business partner worked many years ago for a well-known precious metals company, at a time when the Boss went to a government meeting and there randomly opined that, if catalytic devices lined with certain of their product (what a coincidence) were fitted to every petrol engine’s exhaust, then noxious emissions would be almost eliminated. The government folks fell for it and asked how long it would take to get to production. The Boss said 12 months. The government folks said “Do it”.

The Boss then returned to his in-house science-types and announced, almost aplogetically, “I think I may have dropped us in it, guys. What can we come up with – money no object?” The rest is history, albeit expensive and pointless history – just like diesel particulate filters.

I recall some of those scare stories, from memory, they found a very good correlation with older housing near the roads with lead water pipes in the properties. Like all these things, the real reason is complex and multi-faceted, for example the air is cleaner on the approaches to Heathrow because the aircraft no longer dump excess fuel coming in!

“Well, that’s almost a complete set of hypochondriac diseases right there. We just needed fibromyalgia – that dread disease of middle class American women – to complete it.”

You’re welcome to my rheumatoid arthritis anytime; you may also enjoy the nauseating poison which is the best treatment atm. Fibromyalgia is one of the joys of surviving Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 13; just ask my daughter, now 31. Added to it are depression – which I believe is a big trigger for FM symptoms – and a remarkable affinity for any malady with a virus attached.

I am suffering with an as yet undiagnosed severe tendon problem; which I am pretty sure is the result of taking ciprofloxacin some months ago, part of chemo on the NHS. I wasn’t warned about the possible side effects. It took me weeks to find out the probable cause, but my GP/oncologist both deny it could happen, in spite of there being a “black box” warning on the box about it in the USA. This side effect can takes months to appear, long after you stopped taking the drug, and guess what one of the common mis-diagnoses for it is?

Fibromyalgia.

I used to be very sceptical of those who claimed to be ill with these odd, debiltating diseases with no known cause, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, but having gone, in less than a week, from a very fit person to someone who has to painfully shuffle like a 90 year old in case I snap a tendon, I have re-assessed my views.

Great post as ever. Pedantry from me as usual. Why use the verb ‘deconstruct’ three times? You surely mean ‘analyse’? I did think the fashion for using the word deconstruct to dress up a boring bit of old fashioned analysis was a fault of the wannabee trendy young. I’m surprised and sorry it has spread so far. Mars otherwise excellent prose.

When we were struggling to sort out one of my children’s handicap, and work out what best to do for him, it was interesting to watch the reactions of the other parents we dealt with.

There were almost two poles of denial. Those who just wouldn’t accept the situation and whose version of fond hope syndrome was that it would all just go away. They did next to nothing, and the kids got very little of whatever help might be available to help them make what progress they could.

Then there were those who believed that if that if they moved every mountain, their kids would completely overcome their difficulties. Nothing was going to stop these people tracking down every possible ‘cure’ and take whatever steps they saw fit, emotional blackmail, legal action, and so on, to enforce its provision, with a persistence that often bordered on the irrational . Not even when, if you took a step backward and looked properly at their kids, it was obvious to anyone with any common sense that they were not rocket scientist material, and, short of some extraordinary miracle, never, ever, would be

Interesting thing was though, how common it was, that those parents who seemed to have the greatest intellectual ability often seemed to demonstrate the least emotional intelligence with regard to how to deal with the specific problem they faced

You can’t determine most of this sort of behaviour as being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, though. Either on the part of the parents, or even those supporting them, who, from wjat I could see, often seemed to have every bit as hard a time in fulfilling their professional advisory roles, as they just couldn’t just cast these people off when they come looking for help, or when they were in decision making roles, as saying ‘No’ in such circumstances is about as unsatisfying a job as many of us would care to have

A really interesting case for many reasons Anna and for the little it is worth the following appear most relevant to me 1) The judgement is essentially a finding of fact(s) and reflects a detailed examination of documents by the Court whereby false allegations are masterfully deconstructed. Can you imagine though someone of Baker J’s ability and intellect taking the trouble to wade through the evidence 11) I think you are too kind in your assessment of Edith –I give no opinion on whether she should have been able to control herself but I don’t see her behaviour as compulsive but rather as self centred but I am no expert but I am not sure it is a matter for an expert to decide upon any more than it is a matter for an expert to opine on criminal behaviour save in cases of insanity. It is difficult to imagine though that over the 20 or so years Edith never reflected on what she was doing but if she did she appears to have chosen to dismiss what was objective reality in favour of a self serving subjective reality for which others were expected to pay any price. It would be interesting and potentially valuable to know Edith’s own childhood history 111) Just as you are in my opinion you are too kind to Edith I think you may be a little harsh on MMR litigators. There are many well meaning lawyers most of whom seem fall foul of some con or another (Gildas I have you in mind as I type as well as a large number of ex colleagues) . 1v)The truth in just about every case I ever dealt with could only be ascertained with adequate time (and in my case a limitless supply of cigarettes) and the documentary evidence—-but most think it is to be found in law books. A reasonably accurate adage is that the practice of law is the application of easily ascertainable law against undecided fact though that is not how I see the law as having developed recently but its heartening to read this case from that perspective though depressing to think that for all the safeguards Edith ‘got away’ with it for as long as she did.

“It is difficult to imagine though that over the 20 or so years Edith never reflected on what she was doing but if she did she appears to have chosen to dismiss what was objective reality in favour of a self serving subjective reality for which others were expected to pay any price.”

Edith was a very unpleasant person, according to the judge. Google ‘narcissistic personality disorder’, and you will have the answer to your conundrum.

@Duncan Disorderly . I agree on a personal basis though that carries no more weight than the opinion of any other unqualified person. But I do have some experience of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and perhaps Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy also and I recently settled an extensive set of instructions to a Psychiatrist to advise on a set of circumstances where I as a layman thought NPD might be relevant.. His short observation was that there were differences between ‘bad and mad’ and declined to opine the NPD was mad leaving to my mind that NPD is ‘bad’. I have read most of the judgement and it appeared to me that Baker J was understated in his criticism of Edith (perhaps practicing law defensively much as Edith’s GP was found to practice medicine with regard to Edith). The key paragraph is 103 or thereabout where Baker J records Edith’s ‘slip of the tongue’ that the case was about her. I suspect Edith to be a grossly inadequate person in any number of ways —without her son and ‘her’ troubles devoid of any true personality and hence the need to construct the persona she has. Perhaps that is the hallmark of a false alligator????

>>There was an MMR conspiracy, through which thousands of doctors and scientists and the media concealed horrific alleged injuries to children. There was a legal conspiracy, through which judges denied fairness. And there was a local government conspiracy, by which hard-pressed social workers wanted to remove autistic children from their parents. So many vested interests had a dog in this fight.

Am I the only person not to follow your point here? And, to be specific, what exactly do you mean by “an MMR conspiracy” here?

Not dim at all Geoff. My writing is at fault here, and I am not sure how to make the meaning clearer, advice welcomed!

Following on from the preceding sentence, my intention was to relate the way those who support Wakefield and his MMR thesis saw the situation – that thousands of doctors and scientists had conspired to conceal the true cause of ‘autism’, that this had been followed by the judiciary conspiring to prevent them having a fair hearing, and that this in turn had been followed by Local Authorities conspiring to take their children away from them – an awful lot of people involved in the conspiracy in their eyes – and a theory which Mr Justice Baker refuted.

I am making no comment about ‘Edith’ or Judge Baker’s deliberations, but there are one or two factual points I would like to make here. Firstly, ‘Matt’ received an early version of MMR vaccine called Immravax, manufactured by Merioux UK, (not GSK which manufactured Pluserix, another MMR vaccine). These vaccines contained the Urabe mumps live virus strain, and a version of this vaccine was already causing problems in Canada, namely aseptic meningitis, seizures and encephalitis, these can all result in neurological damage. The UK Government was warned, but decided in their wisdom to go ahead with implementing the MMR vaccine into the child vaccination schedule in 1988. It was three years before this dangerous vaccine was banned in the UK and replaced with MMR 2. The Government slapped a 20 year ban on any reporting, but the issue surfaced in 2010. Subsequently a few-a VERY few Urabe MMR victims have received some derisory compensation from the UK vaccine injury board. ‘Edith’ plainly believed Immravax had harmed her son and presumably pressured her GP to refer Matt to the Royal Free clinic for assessment by paediatric gastroenterologist Professor Walker-Smith and his team. It seems clear from the medical notes, the clinicians found Matt DID NOT suffer from the syndrome as described in the Wakefield et al 1998 Lancet paper. A Gluten/ Casein free diet was tried, but was found to have no benefit and was discontinued. Probiotics were found to have some beneficial effects. Matt’s constipation was treated with laxatives and he was monitored for a limited time, before being discharged from the clinic. Some press and internet reports have blamed Dr Wakefield for ‘Edith’s’ actions and attitudes. This is unfair. The Royal Free multidisciplinary team, which included Dr Wakefield as a researcher, not a clinician, plainly found no significant bowel issues with Matt. Matt’s autism issues were completely separate, involving other medical and education agencies.